"Welcome to the Adventures of Dear Abbie's Wife"

"Learn from the mistakes of others.  You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."

The Old Farmers Almanac  check out the best times of the moon projects!!

• Nov 1    We hope you all didn't eat too much of that trick or treat candy last night!   We got the call yesterday and we are now new grandparents again born on Halloween day.   

• Thanks for your call Danny Harrison!  Glad that bull you bought several  years ago has done you a good job!  Hope we can replace him with a new young bull!
• Nov 2  A warmer day and the sun did brighten up the day!  Friend Carol came about 10:00 and we worked on her web site.  She is training so she can edit it herself!   I fixed up some meat loaf and baked potatoes for lunch!   We went out and visited the cattle and sure had a good visit!   Check out their new web site at   www.crsmithangus.com  
• Great to hear from you John and Loretta Hall from the panhandle of Texas.   It is exciting news when the Black Icon son you got from us named TLC Todd tested 3 stars for tenderness and a TLC Todd Purebred son tested five stars.. WOW
• We received a picture from the Coleman family of Alexander and his winning steer.   See them at the News Page
• We also want to congratulate our friends, Larry and Peggy Aschermann on their spectacular wins at the American Royal this year.   They donated a heifer to the National Juniors to raffle off and she was won by Teanna Simpson of Thayer MO.   I think I donated to that cause too!   But was not lucky enough to win the heifer! ha   Teanna showed the heifer in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago and was selected Grand Champion Charolais Female for the Junior Show.   Talk about giving and then receiving back!   If you all run into Larry and Peggy congratulate them and thank them for giving away such a fabulous heifer.  I have seen some of the cattle that some folks give away and there is a reason why they donated them...   Not in this case!   They gave one of their very best!   It really says something about their program!
• Nov 3-5   A busy weekend at the Thorne Ranch!   We found out early that Jayne and Larry Hill were headed our way from Arkansas!  I made it to Pryor for various projects!  Went to Carol's to help with the web site and  we went into Claremore for lunch.   I made it home about 4:00 to company!   We cleaned up and headed over to the Chuck wagon for supper!   Yep, Thorne Ranch Bed, Breakfast and Bovine is open again! ha  Larry, Jayne and I headed to Joplin Stockyards for the Armitage cow sale in the morning.  Abbie stayed home and ran some cows through for pre breeding shots!  It rained on us part of the way to Joplin!   Larry got five of the Santa Cruz cows and we loaded and headed home!   Jayne and I headed south to Chouteau and visited the local antique mall!   We came home with treasures and also BBQ ribs from Archies!   Yes Sheila, you were right!  Those are the best ribs and smoked turkey we have had in awhile!   We watched the Arkansas football game and enjoyed the evening!   About 4:30 in the A.M.  a little knock came on the back door and here was Clay and Amy!  So Thorne Motel was open for business again! ha  We all had a great visit over coffee and sweet rolls!  The Hill's got loaded with some of our cattle too so they had a full load to take back to Arkansas.   Clay and Amy picked out a couple to take south too!   Then in drove Madison and David to pick up their feeder steers for the OK Steer Feed out!  Ike Eldridge stopped by to see the Maine bulls!  So it has been revolving doors or gates at the Thorne Ranch this past weekend!  We are sure blessed with great customers and friends though!  We can't complain about nobody coming to see us and definitely not complaining when they leave with cattle!  Several less mouths to feed after this weekend!  Thanks so much!  Come back soon!  It's time to wash beds and catch up on book work!  I have dental appointments for three horses tomorrow at 8:00.   Floating teeth is so much fun!
• Nov 6-8   We are catching up on several projects.  Kevin came Monday to help out in the morning.  Wish we could keep him all day!   They started trying to fix fence and get the chain saw started.  Trees keep falling on the fence line down in the south pasture!   The deer hunters have contributed to a cut fence line, too.   Chain saws are worse than weed eaters.  We took it into Adair for repairs again.  Davy sent the links for the video pictures and I spent a good part of the day adding them to the web site.  He really did a spectacular job.  Sure makes the cattle come to life on a dead page.   Make sure you check them out on the home page, donors and sires.   Anywhere you see  this video camera click on it and load the clip.     Here is one of Betsy and Teddy.
•  Tuesday I did several morning chores like laundry and picking up the homestead.   Ran to Pryor and also Claremore to assist Carol some on her web site and then ran to Lowe's to pick up a new faucet for the utility room sink.  It's dripping.. and it is the last faucet to replace since I have been here.   Today is scrub and clean the barn office and chute room.  I spent until late in the evening scrubbing and cleaning a very dirty office and floor!   I am making tags for the last calves born so we can wrestle them today I am sure.   I am hauling four bulls to Strafford in the morning so I best gitter done! ha  I don't have anyone saying they will volunteer.  ha We are flushing several donors on Thursday afternoon too.

• Nov 9-11   We hauled bulls to Strafford MO Thursday to collect.   We meaning friend Carol.   We had a great time and sure enjoyed the beautiful day even though we were in the truck most of the time!   Two hours over and three hours back!   They had a bad wreck on I-44 just on the west side of Springfield, so we were hung up in a long traffic line for at least an hour!   It's pretty minor compared to the carnage we saw at the wreck!  Two big trucks, a school bus and a car that must have exploded into flames on impact!   We sure hope those folks made it out okay.   We did get to stop for a little while in Joplin and checked out one Antique Mall.   Not many treasures were found though! ha   I got home to a barn full of folks and no one had had supper so Rachele and I burned up some hot dogs and chips!    Flushing went well on some of the donors!  

•  Friday was another day of the usual!   We put out hay and I got the job of opening gates and taking off the webbing around the bales!   Sure like that better than string tied!   I went down south and saw that six calves were stuck in one pasture and trying to get back to their momma's, so I got them put back and found cattle back in the neighbors pasture.   Ran them out and shut the gate and by then it was pitch black!   The north wind came in today and it dropped 20 degrees in only a few hours!  70 in the morning and 50 by noon!   Hale Broadcasting called today and I gave them a report from northeast OK on weather and Thorne Ranch projects. 

• Saturday was warmer and at least the sun shined today!   Ran into Adair to mail some letters and picked up the chain saw and found the town full of folks for the Christmas Festival and Parade and yearly celebration.  Something I had never gotten to par take in.   They had several booths and lots of old antique cars lined up on main street.   It was fun and I saw some of the neighbors there.   Found a cute Christmas Santa to hang up along the house!  Dinner was in the oven so we had a quiet lunch!  Neighbor Judy stopped by and we had a good visit!   Abbie got the chain saw going and got the big tree off the fence down south.  I loaded up some wood for the pot belly stove while he fixed fence!   We went to the south east end and was surprised to see a guy sitting in a tree stand across the fence from us.  It sure did spook us to look up and see a human being in camouflage in a pretty off the road area! ha   He was archery deer hunting!  Found out it was our neighbor from the East of us!   We had never been officially introduced but we found out his name was Bass!   I had a notion to ask why he wasn't Bass Fishing instead of Bow hunting? ha    He got down and came and helped us fix the fence.  Nice guy!   Since we had ruined his deer hunting anyway! ha   We finished up and headed to the house about dark!  Seems like we can't get everything we need to do done before it gets dark 30!   At least we have some evenings now. 

South Pasture Trees still with colorful leaves!

Gar Integrity Angus bull  and Class Act bull.  Wind break is still a shade in that pen.  Won't be long and they will enjoy the shade side down for a wind break!

• Nov 12-22  We are back!  From a dual purpose trip back east!    We loaded two steers for the Coleman family in Tennessee, a cow and a bull for the Edwards family in North Carolina on the 14th.  We made it the first night part way and then early the 15th we stopped off at Louisville KY first to witness Star win her 5th Grand Championship at the North American.    We got to see and visit several friends, Dutch Kennedy, Dave and Nina McCain from Indiana.  Jerry Jernigan,  Bobbie and Daniel from KY and the Ivey crew from Texas!  Brinks from KS and Stephanie from the Office. We went out for a celebration lunch with Mark and the crew.   Star went out and performed great as usual!  When I named that heifer Star it really fit her personality!   She kicks it in out in the show ring!  Doug Satree was the judge for the show!   He didn't have a bad thing to say about her!  Abbie and Kendall unloaded the two steers in the rain.   It  started raining on us that morning.  Something we haven't seen much of in Oklahoma! 

TLC Bud's Star wins Louisville KY. 

Shown by Zach Ivey Judge: Doug Satree

Nina and her Black Icon heifer

David and his Elvis heifer

Kendall Coleman family from Tennessee took two more TLC steers home!

Daughter Delynn with sweet baby Olivia.

• We drove in rain all the way to Charleston West Virginia that night!   Next morning we headed south on 77 towards Virginia on to North Carolina.  We made it north of Charolette, NC about 12:30 and met Van and Jarrod Edwards with their trailer to pick up the cow and bull!   We backed up to each other and do you think that 2400 pound bull and cow would load over in the other trailer.   We tried everything, feed, sticks, prods, bully bully!  Nothing would work!  So after no success after an hour and a half we shut the gates and followed them home east of Charolette an hour and a half away.   Yes they walked out of the trailer into a shed without any problems.    An afternoon lost and a tank of fuel but they were happy with the cattle, even if they were stubborn bovines!  ha  We made it to the Box Car at Claremont NC and met Rick, Delynn, Phillip, Clayton and Olivia for supper.   The boys have grown so much in a years time!   We had a good supper and the boys didn't recognize me with long hair!   Next day Delynn and I spent some time at the Hickory shopping for baby stuff for Olivia.   She is just as sweet as her pictures!  A real cuddly baby!  Papa Abbie babysat Olivia and got along great that morning!  Abbie went and picked up the boys from day care after they got out of school and they had a good time!  I took Delynn and Olivia to the beauty shop in Claremont and she got her long hair cut off!   She donated her pony tail of 14 inches to Locks of Love.   The hair cut certainly perked up her personality! ha   We had a good supper at their house.   Abbie went with Rick out to check on Harry and the two cows he got from us last year and the two nice heifer calves they raised.    I had my hair cutting scissors along and I gave the boys both a hair cut!  They sit pretty still afraid I might clip their ears off! ha  We all went to lunch at Hickory and had a good time!   We got hooked back up to the trailer and said our goodbyes and left from NC about 5:30.   Wish we could have stayed longer and spoiled the grandkids more!   We headed south to Atlanta, GA- through Birmingham AL-to Tuscaloosa AL for the night!   The town was full of Auburn University fans that had been there for the game that day!  We were lucky to find a room someone had cancelled out on!   We stopped about midnight again!   We got up and headed west toward Mississippi.   We made it across to Lake Village AR about 12:30 and to our friends the Hill's for lunch!   Jayne fixed up some great cornbread and potato soup.   Larry took Abbie around and showed him the 600 acres of catfish ponds and their cattle and horses!   Looks like a lot of work out there keeping those darn fish alive!   We think keeping cattle fed and alive is a chore!   We got left about 5:00 and headed up towards Pine Bluff and then on to Little Rock!  We made it home about 1:30 in the a.m., back in good ole Oklahoma!  Wow what a trip!   We are glad to be home and we thank Kevin for taking such good care of the animals while we were gone!

• Since returning home I have tried to catch up on laundry and bookwork!  Abbie sat up 120 head to put cidars in on Monday.   It never ends!   We will have a quiet Thanksgiving home alone!  All the kids will be somewhere else this year!   But it's our turn to have Christmas this year!  Abbie went to Strafford to pick up the bulls today!  I stayed home to clean the house of Angel's dog hair. ha   Happy Thanksgiving friends...  We wish you many many blessings and safe voyages to and fro!  Come back soon!

Cotton on the road side not snow in Mississippi!

Clay, Rick, Phillip, Delynn and Olivia

Fish ponds in Arkansas

• November 23-25  Happy Birthday Abbie Dear!   Sixty three is young these days.   I know with out a doubt that most younger men would have trouble keeping up with my Mr. Thorne.    He is a work aholic!   He promised me traveling, sight seeing, antiquing and lots of fun when we first got married.   Little did I know that the traveling would always include cattle sales and shows. Every trip has to have cattle included in it somewhere for us to even think about leaving our cattle.   Sight seeing is traveling with a 24 foot stock trailer in the dark through, Charleston West Virginia, Birmingham Alabama,  Atlanta GA at 2 in the morning!  It's pretty hard to see anything but street lights and road signs in the dark!   His idea of traveling is leave at dark after you have worked all day.  He says it saves time and then the roads have less traffic.  Then there is the saying, "We will stop and get a room part way tonight."   Well that means, after midnight and all the motel rooms are full of guest who called ahead for a room!  I think we should have put a bed in the nose of the new trailer just in case Abbie dear can't find sleeping quarters after midnight!  My thoughts are to call ahead and make a reservation so we know where we will be at what time!  Not Abbie dear he loves spur of the moment decisions! ha  He is not going to change we know that now after 10 years of wedded bliss.   I have had to settle for the antique little boy that he is and settle for antiquing shopping by myself when he sends me to deliver cattle to the stockyards.   A small fee for my CL truck driving skills!  ha   I have had some effects on his daily calendar but not as much as I would like! ha   His favorite saying to others is that he winds me up and turns me loose!  He winds me up alright!  Some times a little too tight and he is one that has to unwind me and assist me in my whirl wind projects! ha   All in all Abbie dear, is dear to me and I can't see me living alone in life if it wasn't for him and our darn old cows!  He keeps it interesting for sure! ha

•  What beautiful weather we have been having in Oklahoma!  In the upper 70's.   I did hear that there was some wild fires being fought in the East side of OK though.   We need rain to soak up some very dry grass and trees.   We had a quiet Thanksgiving just me, Abbie, three dogs, four horses and 400 head of cattle.  We put out hay in the afternoon and the cattle were happy to get it!   Abbie AI bred Brian's cows in the afternoon!   I swear that man would rather A I cows than dance! ha   I ventured to Pryor and picked up groceries and supplies on Friday.    Judy came and picked up the couches from upstairs that we sold to her cheap!   That means I now have room for a new set in our living room.    ha   Williams came with cattle to AI in the evening.   Today Ron is here to pick up his Elvis son, so it's been trailers in and trailers out.   

Papa Abbie and Olivia Grace

Papa Abbie, Phillip and Clayton

Abbie driving in the mountains

Virginia country side last week

with cows grazing in the valley's...

Pretty country!

• Nov 26-30  Sunday was another nice day of great weather.  I stirred up six pans of  cinnamon rolls and I spent all morning baking and washing dishes.   Jack came with 40 pounds of pecan's and we had a nice dinner of sirloin steak.  I fixed up sweet potatoes, that came from the Hill's in Arkansas.  

•  Monday was pull cidar day.  Kevin came in the morning to help Abbie.   So I got to cook in the morning  I got in on a some sorting and moving cattle around part of the day.   I drug out all the Christmas lights and decorations for the front porch!  It's beginning to look like Christmas at the Thorne Ranch!   

• Watched the Bachelor and was surprised when Lorenzo picked Jen instead of Sadie.   I think they show you what they want to sway you one way or the other!   The show is getting pretty melon collie now..  You see one whole episode and you have about seem them all.   The reality is that I am sure that most of those fixed arrangements won't work in the end after a fairy tale start.. it's back to the real world after the camera's go out!  I wonder if they would show all the bloopers for an on core in a few years..  Let the real people step up to the plate please?   That one Houston socialite, gosh what was her name.  I didn't think I would forget that already.   Oh yes it was Erica!  For some reason she didn't fit that name as our Erica is nothing like her personality! ha   Maybe that should be the swap!  Erica you go to Houston and enjoy being a socialite and let Erica from Houston come to OK and take care of all your clipping and working cattle projects and put up with a crazy AG teacher and all his FFA kids!    I bet she would freak out if she got some of that hair and green stuff on her body!   Yep I think you would look pretty good in a tiara Erica girl!    Let's hope that they don't bring her back for the Bachelorette?  Wouldn't she give the guys hell? ha  

• Tuesday, Kevin came and helped Abbie gather the cattle for their last shot today!   We have to have the most manageable cows I know of.  As much as we work them and run them through the chute for this procedure and that shot for setting up for Recipients, donors and artificial breeding you would think they'd run the other way when they see us.  But they just go in and take their medicine and walk out of the chute!  Our vet is amazed at our cattle.  He says it's one of the only places that he can wear the same clothes home after working cattle.    He is also amazed at the dispositions.   They never hit the head gate hard like I have seen some cattle do.   In fact if anything sometimes they are a little too tame! ha   It's a problem I will live with! ha

• Kent Barnes stopped by today to chat with Abbie.    I had my new computer man Danny out to hook up the other computer for backup and to store picture files!  I seem to fill up a computer pretty fast with pictures..ha   I also tore into the office and started a big project of cleaning and sorting!  I bet I threw away 50 pounds of sale catalogs and breed magazines.    We never have time enough to read them all, we are too busy raising cattle ourselves!  But it is nice to see what others are doing in the cattle industry too!

• Alan and Susan Hanson from Illinois stopped by and we gave them the tour of the cattle.   They had been to Branson.    They were headed south and saw our sign along the road!    Nice folks, hope we get to meet them again and hope they have safe traveling!  

• Donors will start coming in tonight and with the low pressure front coming in Abbie is getting antsy to get them bred.    So he headed back to the barn to watch for just the right time to breed.   See what I mean?  A work a holic!

• Well our nice weather went south!  We have been trying to prepare for it but it still caught us unprepared for 70 degrees in the morning to 22 degree weather, wind, rain, sleet and snow in the a.m. next morning!   The cattle are all humped up and cold!   I feel so sorry for them!  Wish we had a big heated shed!   They are tougher than I am!   Kevin made it this morning and I was glad that he could help Abbie with the tanks, cattle and moving some around out of the wind!   I am a potted plant when it comes to cold weather!  I grew up with the howling winds of Nebraska and I don't miss that at all!   At least our winters don't last as long here!   Good think I got most of the Christmas decorations up the other evening when it was 70 degrees!

• We laughed about the time a few winters ago  when I was on the golf cart with a blue tarp over the top of the cart.   I put it there to stop some of the wind!  I thought it was a great addition and invention.   Even though my inventive skills were limited to tarp straps and wire!    I was helping Abbie put out hay and gather cattle.   I had that cart rapped up pretty tight busting through snow drifts... It was probably a funny sight a crazy woman in coveralls, coats, long johns, ear muffs, shawl, klondike boots, and chopper mittens.  Oh how attractive can you get? ha   With that blue tarp flapping all over the place there were a few times I couldn't see anything for the snow and tarp that went in front of me..  I lost my cell phone.    It flew out of my over padded pocket right out into the snow banks through the tarp.   I searched for it but didn't find it.   Abbie found it when the spring thaw hit surprisingly!  Nope it didn't work!  If they can make water proof watches why the heck can't they make cell phones water proof? ha

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